Tap it, Map it, Zap it

Hi Everyone!

Well I took a little break from blogging due to the holidays and getting back into the swing of things at school! I made it back though! So what I wanted to share today was a method to sounding out words that I began using recently with all my kiddos kinder-3rd. It is called Tap it, Map it, Zap it. With this strategy I have found that my students are becoming better spellers and are more conscious when they read and write.

The first thing I do is introduce Tap It. The students will hold up their fingers and tap their index finger to their thumb as they say the sounds in a word. For example, I say dog and they say /d/ /o/ /g/ as they tap their fingers. They will then hold up how many sounds that they tapped out.

I will then tell them to map it. At this point the students will move to their sound boxes and use those to map the sounds out loud.

To finish it up I will say "ZAP IT" and all of the students will recode the word. In this case they would say "dog".

For my second and third graders we take it a step further and Graph It. I will use large box graphing paper and the students will write the sounds they heard in each box. As they improve their writing I add words with blends, vowel pairs, silent e, etc. In these cases the students will graph the words with one sound in each box. For example, flag would be graphed in 3 boxes: fl-a-g. The word lake would also be in 3 boxes: l-a-ke.

I love how quickly my students have caught on to this strategy and how often they use it in their classrooms!

If you have used this strategy or have tried it since reading this post let me know how it goes for you!!